


THE BROCA DIVIDE

by ivorygates



Series: Across Five Aprils [6]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Daniverse, Episode: s01e05 The Broca Divide, Fix-It, Gen, Girl!Daniel, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-24
Updated: 2007-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The remix.</p>
<p>Apparently you could not swing a cat during SG-1's first year without hitting a rapey culture, something Dani finds out...</p>
<p>PS: I have no idea why A03 says this is s01e05 and Gateworld says it's s01e04, so I tagged with both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	THE BROCA DIVIDE

When they get back from Simarka, General Hammond tells them there might be a lead on Skaara's location.

Even though he's been taken by the _Goa'uld_ and Teal'c says the host doesn't survive, she can't stop thinking of him as Skaara.

Ten of the refugees they brought back from Chulak have identified four of the Gate symbols that Apophis dialed.

They match one address on the Abydos cartouche.

Skaara might be there.

If they can bring him back, maybe they can help him.

She's lost Sha're. She won't lose her brother too.

#

  
  
They can't see anything of where they're going -- it was too dark for the MALP to send back pictures -- and it's cold. General Hammond sends SG-3 with them. Colonel Robert Makepeace and his merry collection of Marine knuckle-draggers. She doesn't like them, they don't like her. She's afraid they'll shoot Skaara the moment they see him.

It's Jack's call. And General Hammond's.

Jack would never let anybody hurt Skaara.

They go through.

The night goggles fit badly over her glasses and they pinch.

She guesses nobody's supposed to wear glasses in the wonderful world of the military, which is ridiculous. Walter wears glasses.

#

They're attacked immediately, by shadowy figures they can't quite see.

SG-3 comes through after them and opens fire.

They identify their attackers at last. Primitive, with a heavier brow and jaw-ridge than human.

They're attacking a girl who looks completely human. Dani and Sammy want to stop them. Jack doesn't want to interfere.

But when some other humans show up, throwing rocks at the primitives, Jack comes down on their side. They drive off the primitives. He keeps Makepeace and his men from shooting them. They rescue the girl.

And that's how they meet High Councilor Tuplo and the People of the Land of Light.

The first people they encountered – the primitives -- are known to the humans as the Touched. They have been cursed, so say the Untouched, by the _Hilk'sha_. It is a _Goa'uld_ word meaning _evil gods._

She learned it on Abydos.

Why the _Goa'uld_ would have any use for such a word, Dani can't imagine.

The Untouched say that the Curse of the _Hilk'sha_ turns men into beasts. They say the Touched aren't a separate race. That they used to _be_ them, until they were …cursed.

This opens a fascinating field for exploration, as does the fact that the Land of Light bears a strong resemblance to Ancient Crete. Why?

Jack, of course, doesn't care. No weapons, no Skaara. He's eager to go home.

#

It's been two months since she got back to Earth and joined the Stargate Program, and for every day of that time, she's been fighting for a recognition of the importance of the scientific and cultural importance of the Stargate on an equal basis with its military applications. General Hammond is probably really getting tired of her memos. She knows Jack is getting tired of hearing about it at briefings.

Still, given what's just happened on P3X-797, she gives it one more try, only to discover that the President -- of the United States -- has asked that they evaluate the scientific and cultural value of each mission from now on alongside its military potential. On an ongoing basis.

She's won.

That's when Lt. Johnson -- SG-3 -- attacks Teal'c. (Which is pretty weird, but it does liven up the debrief.)

Johnson is taken away in restraints and things settle down again. They then get to hear about how P3X-797 doesn't seem to rotate at all, and how Sammy thinks the planet's lack of rotation may be artificially-imposed. If the planet doesn't rotate, the only habitable area of the whole place is a narrow band about a hundred miles wide straddling the terminator; the rest has to be lifeless desert of one extreme or another.

The place fascinates Sammy as much as it fascinates her, for a whole different set of reasons.

There's still no follow-up mission planned.

#

An hour later, she's helping Sammy run a diagnostic on the Gate down in the Gateroom.

"If I'm going to be walking through it all the time, I want to be sure it doesn't… do anything," Dani says darkly, waving the clipboard Sammy has handed her.

Like hiccup and scatter her atoms all over space.

It already freezes her and gives her pounding headaches. Sammy says she's working on fixing that.

"You sound like Dr. McCoy," Sammy says.

"Who?"

_"Star Trek?"_

"What?" Dani says blankly.

"Don't tell me you've never watched--"

Just then there's a shout and the sound of breaking glass. Two men, locked in combat, crash through the glass wall of the briefing room above and fall thirty feet to the Gateroom floor. Whatever took Johnson out has affected them too.

But the good thing is -- if there's good news -- is that neither of the second two victims went to P3X-797. So the problem doesn't seem to be connected with that.

But she turns out to be wrong. By an hour later, all of SG-3 is in quarantine, and the contagion is spreading. Dr. Frasier – she's new -- asks her to do some research on the physical characteristics of primitive man, since the earliest victims actually seem to be _devolving._ Starting to look like the Touched from P3X-797.

That's a stupid name for a planet. Sammy says it's based on a binary code the computer uses for extrapolation. Whatever that means.

Dani pulls a couple of books off her shelves and marks chapters, and cross-references the material with some Internet sources. She drops the material off in Dr. Frasier's office and goes up to the Control Room. If anybody knows what's going on, the news will be there.

Oddly enough, Jack is there. And, for that matter, still there. It's not that he's exactly punctual about checking out of The Mountain at night -- though he spends a lot less time here than either she or Sammy does -- but she still thought he'd have left hours ago.

He's still here. And looking a bit battered. He tells her Sammy jumped him in the shower room. Sammy's got what Johnson has.

"She attacked you?" Dani is more puzzled by the idea than anything else. If the victims of the disease are devolving to primitive forms both physically and mentally, it makes no sense for Sammy to attack Jack.

Jack looks uncomfortable. "No. She, ah, tried to seduce me."

"Oh! Well, that's good." By which she means it doesn't contradict her theory. "All the victims are behaving like primitives. Most low-order female primates tend to choose their sexual partners according to who would give them the strongest offspring. The leaders of a pack or tribe are usually the prime choice. You should be flattered."

"Doesn't matter," Jack says dismissively. "I didn't want her anyway. I want you."

The words are so cognitively dissonant that she doesn't react at first. It's the very last thing on Earth she can imagine Jack O'Neill saying to her.

Ever.

But then she looks up.

He's looking at her.

The intensity of his gaze is frightening, and enough to distract her from worrying about Sammy, which was the next thing on her 'do'-list.

"Come here," he says.

She backs away. He advances. It's like being stalked by a leopard. "Oh, hey, hey, _hey,_ Jack you really want to think about this especially in the _Control Room of the SGC_ because you know how people are going to ta--"

He lunges for her. It takes three airmen to drag him away.

Jack has it too.

#

She doesn't have it.

Teal'c doesn't have it.

Dr. Frasier -- poor woman; it's a hell of a first week -- doesn't know why they're immune. They were on the planet. They should have it right now. Teal'c's symbiote is probably protecting him. What's her excuse?

Dr. Frasier wants a blood sample from one of the Untouched on P3X-797 to see if she can isolate, well, something Dani can't quite figure out. But Frasier gives her and Teal'c a quick lesson in drawing blood, and sends them back through the Gate.

Just the two of them.

Alone.

There's nobody to send with them.

#

The first thing they encounter on the other side is Melosha, the same girl they rescued before -- it's okay to call her that, she's at least ten years younger than Dani -- lying unconscious beside the path through the dark forest. The forest where it never becomes light.

Melosha has become one of the Touched.

Dani isn't sure what to do. They can't take her back to the Light Side. Her parents will just send her back here again. Abandoning her.

"C'mon, Teal'c, we've got to take her with us."

"We cannot do that, Danielle Jackson. We must complete our mission."

"Look, Teal'c, we'll just take her back to the SGC with us. You'll have to carry her, though. But Dr. Frasier probably wants her too. Really. And we can't just leave her here."

She manages to talk Teal'c into it. He hands her his staff weapon and picks up Melosha. He strides off down the path toward the Land of Light. She follows, carrying his staff weapon and her walking stick.

The Touched come out of the trees.

She drops her stick, racks and fires the staff weapon. But to be sure to avoid hurting them, she has to fire high over their heads, and they soon realize that.

They surround her.

There are a lot of them and they're very strong.

#

Teal'c is forced to drop Melosha when the Touched attack. They swarm over him, but they're more interested in dragging Melosha away than in doing him harm. When they have her, they retreat. He searches for Danielle Jackson, but he cannot find her.

Only his staff weapon.

Her walking stick.

And her glasses.

#

She fights them until she realizes there's no hope of getting away. Anthropology has been a lot of help lately but right now she feels that a nice zoology degree would have been a lot more use.

They have a camp deeper in the woods. A fire. There are about a dozen Touched gathered around the site before the band that have her arrive. Most are wearing the rags of the clothing they were abandoned in the forest in, but some have fashioned crude new garments of animal skins. All have the pronounced brow ridge and jutting jaw of Primitive Man.

She sneezes violently. One more thing to add to her misery -- as if being held prisoner by subhumans weren't bad enough -- she'd been supposed to go to the infirmary for her allergy shots just after the briefing today, and in all the mess with Johnson, she forgot. Now she's paying the horrible price.

She sneezes again.

They give her free run of the campsite once they get there, and don't pay a lot of attention to her, but when she tries to leave, she gets dragged back and cuffed to the ground.

They have Melosha as well. They take a lot more interest in Melosha.

Dani lost her walking staff back in the initial ambush, but there are dropped tree branches at the edge of the clearing. She picks one up and uses it as a weapon, forcing the males away from Melosha. That attracts the attention of the tribe's alpha male -- for some reason she thinks of Jack -- who takes over beating the hell out of the upstart males for no particular reason, since as far as she can see, sex is not the privilege of the alpha alone. Nor is it a particularly private act among the Touched. However, when he's done with his rivals, he thinks he's secured ownership rights to Melosha, and there's little she can do to stop him.

She tries. Melosha bites her. And hisses.

Dani can take a hint. She retreats to the edge of the clearing with her makeshift club. They won't let her get away -- they're watching her closely -- but right now they're not bothering her. She glares at anyone who gets too close.

Melosha's bite broke the skin. It itches.

She rubs the back of her bitten hand against her trousers. Sits and broods.

This is all Jack's fault.

Always dragging her out of interesting places.

If they'd just _stayed here in the first place_ and talked to these people the way she'd wanted to, they'd know all about this virus by now. Exactly what they were up against. Probably have a good start on the culture and native history of this place as well. What's the relationship between the _Hilk'sha_ and the _Goa'uld_ , for example?

This is all Jack's fault.

If he were here right now she'd explain that to him.

In detail.

She growls.

Starts to pant.

Licks her hand, where Melosha bit her.

She doesn't remember a lot after that.

#

He wakes up in an isolation room. The last thing he remembers clearly is making a grab for Indiana in the Control Room, but he isn't sure exactly why.

Indiana is missing.

Teal'c lost her to the Touched on the other side of the Gate.

Doc Frasier has found a cure for the virus. Apparently all you have to do is take cold pills. SG-1 and SG-3 are geared up with tranquilizer rifles. The loads are antihistamines, not tranquilizers, but the Doc says they'll work just the same way on any of the Touched they encounter.

Indy has allergies. Bad allergies. The antihistamines in her system should keep her from getting the virus, but they won't protect her from anything else.

Carter looks at him as they step up the ramp. He sees the question she doesn't want to ask aloud.

_Is she still alive?_

He looks away.

They go through.

#

He wants to think she escaped from the Touched and made it to the Light Side, but if she did, she's already safe. They have to eliminate the Worst Case Scenario first. They track back and find where the Touched have made their camp.

She's there. Alive. At the back of the camp, far from the fire, in the middle of a circle of young males. One of them is feeding her.

She's been infected.

"Guess her antihistamines wore off," Carter says weakly.

The Touched attack. Everyone opens fire with the dart guns, trying to avoid hitting Dr. Jackson. In moments she's the only one left upright.

"Just let me go in and give her an injection--" Carter says.

She starts forward. Indy scuttles backward on hands and knees. Her clothes are in rags. She's showing a lot of skin. She bares her teeth at Carter. Shrieks furiously. Challenging Carter. For what, he's not sure.

O'Neill shoots her with his rifle.

She falls.

He tells Carter to take a blanket and wrap her up. See how badly she's hurt.

#

She wakes up staring at a familiar ceiling.

She's in the infirmary.

She aches all over.

That must have been some …party?

Jack is yelling.

"--stupid, superstitious, barbarians! If we _did_ happen to be gods -- which we aren't -- we'd--"

"Colonel--"

That's Sammy.

She opens her eyes. Sits up. (Ouch.)

"Hey, Jack."

He turns around. Looking more like he looked in the Control Room than she wants to see right now, but the expression is gone before she's sure she sees it.

"How ya doin'?"

"Still as diplomatic as ever, I see," she says. She pushes her hair out of her eyes.

"You have recovered, Danielle Jackson." Teal'c. He places her glasses into her hand. She puts them on.

"Um… Yeah." She looks at Jack. "So have you."

"Frasier found a cure."

"Good."

"Chlorpheniramine starves the virus out of the body," Sammy explains. "You didn't get infected until your allergy shots wore off."

Sammy's okay too.

"So… we can help them?" she says.

Jack doesn't say anything.

"Jack, we _are_ going back there to help them, right?" She swings her legs over the side of the bed and stands. She's wearing a set of scrubs. A little rocky, and everything hurts, but she's felt lots worse. She walks over to him. The floor is cold under her bare feet.

He still doesn't say anything. The patented Jack O'Neill method of winning an argument.

She glares up at him. "Oh, for crying out loud! We've _had_ this discussion! The _President_ said we could start doing more than shopping at the arms bazaar! You're supposed to be a good little soldier! Follow orders!"

"You could have been killed."

"Yeah, you could have killed me in the Control Room. Come _on,_ Jack! This is what we're supposed to be doing! Helping people!" Fixing the damage the _Goa'uld_ have done.

Dr. Frasier comes in before he can come up with a reply.

"Are you upsetting my patient, Colonel?"

He smiles at Frasier. Jack can be very charming when he smiles. Dani wants to slap that smile right off his face. She really does.

"Actually, Doc, your patient is upsetting me."

Yeah, right.

"Well, I don't care who's to blame. All of you, out of my infirmary. Dr. Jackson, get back into that bed."

#

Dr. Frasier confirms what she already knew: that she was extensively physically intimate with the Touched.

She doesn't remember.

She doesn't remember much of anything after trying to pull the alpha male off Melosha.

She's banged up, bruised, and sore. But not hurt. In the sense of damaged. And not pregnant. Norplan implants are advised -- though not mandatory -- for female combat personnel. She has one too.

"Do you have to tell them?" she asks Dr. Frasier. Two missions -- one right after the other -- where she's been kidnapped as somebody's sexual pawn. It isn't going to look good in the records. It could make General Hammond decide he won't let her stay on SG-1. Make him put her on that desk job he keeps hinting he wants her to take.

If he does that, how can she look for Skaara?

"That you were raped?" Dr. Frasier asks cautiously. "Look, Dr. Jackson, it wasn't--"

"It isn't rape if you consent," she says stubbornly. "Dr. Frasier, I know I sound a little… But I really don't remember what happened. And at the time… It was an alien virus. And… I'm not military. They're just putting up with me, really. If they think I can't pull my weight out in the field, if they think I'm a liability, General Hammond won't let me stay on SG-1. And I _have_ to stay on SG-1."

Everybody knows she's looking for Skaara out there.

Dr. Frasier just looks at her. Sighs. "Dr. Jackson, I have to put _something_ in my report, and I'm not going to lie. How would _you_ describe what happened to you on P3X-797?"

"Typical socio-sexual primate behavior engaged in while under the influence of an alien virus," she answers evenly.

"'Injuries consistent with,'" Frasier says. She nods. "You know, that isn't going to fool anybody."

She _does_ know. But it sounds better.

#

The ultimatum that she's dreading -- that she's a liability, that she's being taken off SG-1 -- doesn't come. In fact, a few days later, SG-1 -- all four of them -- goes back to the Land of Light with a medical team to formalize a treaty with the natives. And to teach them how to cure all of the Touched. To banish the disease forever.

She has to do most of the talking. Jack is in one of his worst moods, all sulks and monosyllables. It's almost like being back on Abydos with him. She supposes he just hates losing an argument. But she's _right._

They stay for several days, escorting the SGC medical team through the forest so they can dose the remaining Touched who are hiding out there. Sammy gets to bring along a bunch of science toys and study something Dani doesn't quite understand about the planetary non-rotation. Apparently it's very exciting news that the Stargate is on the dark side instead of the light side. But Sammy's enjoying herself. A pure science mission. Their first.

Melosha is back with her family. Like all of the former Touched, she doesn't remember anything about the time she was sick.

After a week, they Gate home.

#

Jack finally seems to settle down once they get back, but for some reason she never figures out, he suddenly decides that it's become vital that she -- and Teal'c -- see all the episodes of something called _Star Trek._ Possibly it's a subtle form of revenge.

_Star Trek_ is an old television series that went off the air around the time she was five. It's Jack's opinion it will improve her mission readiness.

They watch it on the VCR in Teal'c's quarters. Jack has to explain it to both of them, though she's usually the one who explains Earth culture to Teal'c.

She is never going to figure out Jack O'Neill.

Never.

#

INTERLUDE 4:

Dr. Danielle Jackson, PhD. dresses – and frequently acts -- like a teenaged boy. Sam has become pretty much resigned to it.

Despite which, Sam found out early on that Dani has had either a more active sex life -- or has a more vivid and well-researched imagination -- than Sam would have expected. Which came as something of a surprise. Not a cloistered academic after all. Or a backward child. Good thing after all, Sam guesses, considering what happened on the dark side of the Land of Light.

Their Indiana is full of surprises.

She thinks makeup, high heels, and -- apparently -- clothing that fits, are all inventions of the Devil.

She's fascinated by anything new.

Wormhole physics? Doesn't understand it and never will. But is happy to listen to Sam explain it for hours. Sam thinks she's listening more to the rhythm of Sam's voice than the words, as if she can extract some kind of meaning from that. As if it were possible. Through Sam, she's made friends with Janet Frasier, their new Chief Medical Officer, too.

Sam doesn't think Dani's had a lot of friends before.

Sam knows Dani misses her … tribe … back on Abydos. She considers them her family. She knows that Dani is desperately hoping to find Skaara, and somehow free him from his _Goa'uld_ , and take him home. Sam doesn't want to say -- after what happened to Major Kawalsky -- how slim the chances of that are. Sometimes all you have is hope.

But she's told Sam a little of what her future would have been on Abydos, and Sam can't believe that any woman -- much less a woman as gifted, as brilliant, as Dani -- could want that for herself. To be Skaara's concubine. Not even his wife. He was going to marry someone else -- someone younger, she's told Sam matter-of-factly, someone suitable -- and she would become his concubine, a servant in his household. Probably dying in childbirth by the time she was forty. If she lasted even that long.

She can't still be planning to do that, if they manage to free Skaara.

Can she?

Would General Hammond allow it?

Would Colonel O'Neill?

###

**Author's Note:**

> "The Broca Divide" gets pretty awkward when Dr. Jackson is female. Yes, Dani's "It isn't rape if you consent," line is wrong on so many levels, but all she's thinking of at this point is making Janet write a report that won't get her bounced off the team.
> 
> I really should have done more with Janet in this ep. Maybe someday, in the Director's Cut...
> 
> While I usually stick with Dani's POV throughout a remix, this one *does* have other POVs in it here and there. I skipped most of Jack's storyline, though, and this is really another Jack-centric episode. Meanwhile, you will note that I have followed canon (remember, he wanted to name the _Prometheus_ the _Enterprise_ ) in making Jack a big _Star Trek_ fan. And of course, Dani's never seen the show...
> 
> Sam, especially in the early days, was the Prickly Feminist Poster Girl for the team, so that's a part of the "Interlude" section. With love.


End file.
